WHERE –
21 VYNER ST, LONDON E2 9DG

WHEN – 
JUNE 2 –  JULY 3, 2011

Transgression was borne from the desire to curate an exhibition that would provide a perspective of sexuality and gender as radical concepts, reframed through a context in which these ubiquitous idea(l)s could be presented as something perhaps alternative, politically engaged, or subversive. It was a sinister but ultimately empathetic photographic work from artist Jakob Lena Knebl that provided the basis for the entire exhibition, in which the transgendered artist is rigged like a sadomasochistic marionette by what appears to be a horse-bit protruding from her mouth. The photograph lingered like a troubling dream, until the remainder of the exhibition took shape around this image, the very pulsating heart of Transgression…Presenting the exhibition in conjunction with the University of Kent’s symposium on Aesthetics, Pornography & Art at the London Institute of Philosophy further drove the pertinent questions of how, why, and to what degree would the work in Transgression incorporate or subvert the expectations of an exhibition – quite bluntly put – on radical sexuality. We hotly debated the merit and validity of sexually-informed imagery for inclusion in this exhibition: was it necessary to take a more literal approach (and would such literalness in turn translate to work that would be heedlessly graphic in nature and/or crude?); conversely, would viewers feel that an exhibition prioritizing allegory and metaphor miss the mark of a show purporting to explore the rich depths of extreme sexuality and its aesthetic representation?

Transgression would eventually include 14 extraordinarily talented international artists, including renowned artist Bruce LaBruce, whose work has redefined the status of sexually-charged imagery in progressive contemporary art. Among those talented individuals included are an artist who maintains a contract with his lover permitting either to perform a cannibalistic act upon the first deceased; a performance by a man in drag that would provide both humor and poignancy that I witnessed for the first time nearly 2 years previous but remained a haunting spectacle; the victim of a gay-bashing incident whose painted self-portraits exhibit his physical and emotional scars; and an HIV-positive artist whose art has literally become his life – and life his art. Each articulation offers a remarkable perspective to a subject about which theses artists feel greatly impassioned, and which – in some instances – has defined not just the artwork but also the artist. It would appear that the pulsating heart bleeds…